Not at home: land row reason

Among the several largesse doled out to Bihar by the UPA-I government was setting up an IIT - in 2007, it decided to established the coveted institute in the state.

A Central team, which visited the state to take stock of the situation, earmarked the venue at Bihta, around 30 km from Patna. The proposed site, however, got embroiled in controversy after the state government started the process of acquisition of 500 acre of land. It is now expected that IIT Patna will shift to Bihta by December 2014 when the new campus is ready.

Till then, the academic activity, which began from August 6, 2008, from a makeshift campus in Patna’s posh Patliputra Colony will continue. The Nitish Kumar regime in 2008 had allowed the Government Polytechnic building, spread over 10 acre of land, to be used as a temporary campus for the IIT where each classroom is equipped with modern audio-visual electronic gadgets. 

The academic building has state-of-the-art laboratories in Computer Science, Physics and Chemistry. It also houses the Computer Centre. Laboratories in Basic Electronics, Analog Electronics, Digital Electronics, Control, Instrumentation and Communication are also located in this building. The building also has a central library, the administrative office, a dispensary, a cafeteria and faculty chambers. In the present academic session, 199 students have been enrolled in B Tech, 101 students have got admission in M Tech, while 32 students have joined the PhD programme. 

Notably, IIT Patna is the first institute among all the IITs to start M Tech in Nanotechnology. “I have been told that IIT-Patna is far ahead of all other new IITs in terms of research work and has achieved international standards,” said Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, the director of IIT Kharagpur, who has been given additional charge of IIT Patna after its director A K Bhowmick retired.